


Higher Places

by brokenAmphora



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:03:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4427690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenAmphora/pseuds/brokenAmphora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cronus can't stand the way things are in his life, so he makes a decision he will sorely regret later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Higher Places

_Tonight, my head is spinning_  
_I need something to pick me up_  
_I’ve tried but nothing is working_  
_I won’t stop_  
_I won’t say I’ve had enough_

For as long as you can remember, you have been ostracized and disgraced. You were too high on the blood caste for the lowbloods, yet too low on the cast to appeal to Her Royal Colonoscopy. It was the sick joke of the universe to fuck with you in every way possible.

It started when you all hit two sweeps and you had your first childhood crush on Aranea. She was smart, adorable, and had you whipped something fierce. You had tried impressing her with an embarrassing array of facts about your interests at the time. She wasn't interested, but you were determined to win her heart. You tried everything: changing interests, your vernacular, how you dressed, sacrificing your identity for her because she was just so cute and you would die inside for her attention.

But she ignored you. She was after Meenah instead, who rubbed it in your face, every chance she could. She was with your love interest, and your love interest was dating her. And not you.

When you were two and a half sweeps old you met Rufioh and his gaggle of Lost Weeaboos. You saw an opportunity for friendship and took it with bright-eyed earnest. Hell, there was even some cute quadrant material in the group. Maybe you'd kill two birds with one stone, maybe you wouldn't be so alone after all. The next time you saw him you were adorned in their colors, swaggering and slurring words around like them, doing your best to fit in.

That night you learned from them that it was "bad" to be a highblood. You were too high on the spectrum for them. You just wanted to "feel better" about being a highblood. You just wanted to be "edgy." Of course you wanted to feel better about yourself! Who doesn't want to feel confident? Who wants to be alone throughout their childhood, aching, wishing, hoping for contact with another living soul that understood them, who doesn't want to reach out? But they think you have a superiority complex. That you're not genuine. You'll never be like them or run with them. That night you learned to feel bad about yourself, for being who you are, for things beyond your control. You sulked alone for hours.

At three sweeps you started playing games with Mituna. It was a kismesitude in the beginning, you were sure of it, but you were both too young to engage in unbridled pitch relations. You settled for a dysfunctional friendship based completely around gaming and throwing the controller when you got pissed off as Mituna beat you again and again. But he always had a smile on his face and he never took your insults seriously, even throwing in his own because it was all a joke to both of you. For once you had someone you could honestly say you saw often on good terms. You might even have called it the beginning of a friendship.

Then Latula came along, and she was one hell of a gamer. She beat Mituna up in games more times than you were there to count, and soon, you lost your one and only friend to a matespritship you would never have. You got fucking pissed. You hauled that game system at the wall and shattered it, stomping out of Mituna's hive without another word. Months later you purchased a new one for him, along with a new game, but by the time you worked up the nerve to give it to him, he had moved on, he had spent so much time with Latula that gaming was hardly a priority for him. And when he did bother to play games? He only played with her. Not your jealous attention-seeking ass.

Five sweeps rolled along and you got into art. You started painting, writing, sketching, you fancied yourself an artist. You poured your life into it. The pain of loneliness transformed into threatening needles protruding from the inner walls of a cage, daring the bird inside to fly. The nightmares you'd get dressed in pin stripes and a top hat, offering a dance with gloved hand and mangled teeth upon amber breath. Expectations and social anxiety bled on the page, textured by tentative love of self and emotion. The blood in your veins was the inkwell for your pen. You felt one with your art and it was imperfect, but you loved it nonetheless. You knew you would get better with time, so you kept practicing and venting your emotions onto the canvas. Then, maybe, someone would see this and understand you. They would see you, maybe befriend you, maybe fall in love with you.

Meenah came to you one night and asked what you were working on, in that tone she reserved especially for you when she was bored and needed someone to kick around. You told her eagerly about it because, despite previous interactions, you still believed you had a chance with her. Your youthful ignorance drove you to pursue beyond doubt. You sat in silence as you watched her arch an eyebrow at all you've told her, then watched her grin and smear the fresh ink all over the canvas, then pick it up and rip it to shreds. She told you your bullshit feelings didn't matter to her or to anyone else, and you should stop trying to impress people with your fake edge. There that word was again. Edge. Is that all she thought of you? Is that all anyone ever thought? That you were trying to be edgy? This is you, expressing yourself. You're not doing this shit to be edgy. You don't pour your heart out on a canvas or into lyrics for the scene or for someone to come along and devalue everything you stood for. You do it because you have feelings and they're best understood in art, and it's your only outlet since no one else will bother to fucking listen to you. You were so fucking distraught and pissed that she ripped that and more up and destroyed your entire artistic set up that you cried hot tears, ran a fever, and wandered numb around your hive for the rest of the night.

You thought you would be over it if you slept it off but it wasn't over, not by a fucking longshot. Instead of the frantics that come with being pissed, you were in a calm, calculating rage. The kind people usually run far, far away from and never mess with.

When you got to the common ground where everyone hangs out, you clear your throat loudly. You are visibly pissed and you step up to Meenah first. She and Aranea both back away, putting up pacifist unweathered hands, pretending to be innocent with their "hey Cronus what's wrong"s and "Crodog what's up witchu"s and you were frankly fucking tired of it. You wanted to punch Meenah's face off and watch those pink lips twitch on the ground. How dare she mock your art. How dare she mock YOU. How dare she campaign to smear you as she did with her fingers upon the freshly inked maze of your soul.

You would have done precisely as you wanted, but Kurloz was there. He was known for his use of drugs to calm his subjects and you happened to be his subject tonight. A few hums and whirs later and a tranquilizer was in your neck. Your anger was forced into submission and suddenly Meenah and Aranea, and fucking Rufioh of all people, were laughing along and acting like they had conquered a beast with their self-righteousness. Then they thought they'd have a little fun. Aranea was easily goaded into mind controlling you, making you run into things, punch yourself in the face, making a general fool of you. They acted like it was for your own good. They told you it wouldn't have happened if you weren't such a prick. But what did you do to deserve this level of torment? Nothing. All you ever wanted was to be loved. And this is the price you paid for daring to think of yourself as deserving of anything resembling love.

When you were six sweeps old, you were dragged into a game that shattered your life. Some things were different, yet always the same. You were still beaten and cheated out of important game mechanics you should have been able to decide for yourself, because you suppose this is the universe's cheap trick on you. It became real clear that this is what you were meant for, a laughing stock for everyone else.

And then you found it. Your last chance at redemption. Your one way ticket out of this hell these people dared to call "friendship". You were going to beat Lord English. You, alone, were going to be so powerful that you beat him single handedly and everyone will HAVE to bow down and sell their souls to you or suffer as you had suffered for sweeps on end at their hands. You can't stand this any longer. You make your decision, despite everyone doubting you, and you strive for it like nothing you've sacrificed yourself for. You rise above all of the bullshit.

You can't stand it here, so you take yourself to higher places.


End file.
